Phoebe's Poem
by Poison Ivory
Summary: A short fic...Phoebe has to read a poem aloud in class that reminds her very much of Helga and Arnold.


Author's Note: Okay, I read a poem today, and I was inspired to write this. It's from Phoebe's POV and it's in the present tense, both of which are things I'm experimenting with, so this may suck royally…I hope not. It's just a little fluffy thing—the poems are the best part of it.  
  
Disclaimer: I keep beggin/ I keep tryin'/ Arnold and Helga/ Still are not mine/ None of the others/ Belong to me either/ Nor none of the poems/ In this story neither. (Wow, how did you like that grammar?)  
  
Phoebe's Poem  
  
I am not a public speaker. I am not Helga, or Arnold, or Rhonda. I get nervous when forced to speak in front of people, especially reciting something as personal as poetry. Because I am afraid I will cry today.  
  
Mr. Simmons is a wonderful teacher, but sometimes I dislike the fact that he is so eager to get personal and close with each one of us. Sometimes I think he needs to respect our space. If he knew, really knew, the different secrets some of us hide, I think maybe he would back off.  
  
Back off. I'm starting to sound like Helga, or at least think like her. At least to an extent. I hope it doesn't get too extreme. I think it would be too painful to think like Helga all the time.  
  
We have gone through the whole morning already, and lunch, and recess. Where does the time go? Now it is poetry time, and I am sitting in class, and I am starting to sweat. Gerald looks over at me and smiles, and I am afraid that my smile back at him is a little grotesque, because I am too distracted to smile with my eyes as well as my mouth.  
  
Arnold is called upon to read his poem first. He is reading today, and Helga, and me. I am glad that I don't have to go first. The assignment was to find a poem that reminded you of someone in our class and read it aloud. You don't have to say who the poem is for, but everyone so far has given it away by looking at the object of their reading.  
  
Arnold is no exception. He doesn't read dramatically, and his eyes follow the words on the page avidly, except when they flick upwards to glance at Lila. It isn't as if no one could guess who he was thinking of without looking at her, but he makes it very obvious for the less observant among us.  
  
"My poem is by Andrew Marvell, and is called 'To His Coy Mistress,'" he announces, before launching into the poem.  
  
Had we but world enough, and time  
  
This coyness, lady, were no crime  
  
We would sit down, and think which way  
  
To walk, and pass our long love's day  
  
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side  
  
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide  
  
Of Humber would complain I would  
  
Love you ten years before the flood  
  
And you should, if you please, refuse  
  
Till the conversion of the Jews  
  
My vegetable love should grow  
  
Vaster than empires and more slow;  
  
A hundred years should go to praise  
  
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze  
  
Two hundred to adore each breast  
  
But thirty thousand to the rest  
  
An age at least to every part  
  
And the last age should show your heart  
  
For, lady, you deserve this state  
  
Now would I love at lower rate.  
  
I glance discretely at Helga, sitting next to me. Her face is calm, her eyes serene and almost bored, but the paper with her poem on it is clutched tightly in her hands, and her nostrils are slightly flared with staunchly contained fury. I pity her, forced to sit and listen to Arnold—quite literally—wax poetic about her rival for his affections. Arnold continues on, blissfully ignorant, as always.  
  
But at my back I always hear  
  
Time's winged chariot hurrying near  
  
And yonder all before us lie  
  
Deserts of vast eternity  
  
Thy beauty shall no more be found  
  
Nor in they marble vault shall sound  
  
My echoing song; then worms shall try  
  
That long preserved virginity  
  
And your quaint honor turn to dust  
  
And into ashes all my lust  
  
The grave's a fine and private place  
  
But none, I think, do there embrace.  
  
I can see Lila's face. She is smiling pleasantly, as if she has no idea what Arnold is talking about and is merely enjoying the poem. If she is fooling anyone, it is a very small amount of people. I certainly am not fooled, nor is Helga, nor the more astute persons in the room. Arnold, of course, being the major exception. As always, he is too wrapped up in being infatuated with Lila to actually notice her. For such an intelligent boy, he does make some very large mistakes every so often.  
  
Now therefore, while the youthful hue  
  
Sits on thy skin like morning dew  
  
And while thy willing soul transpires  
  
At every pore with instant fires  
  
Now let us sport us while we may  
  
And now, like amorous birds of prey  
  
Rather at once our time devour  
  
Than languish in his slow-chapped power  
  
Let us roll all our strength and all  
  
Out sweetness up into one ball  
  
And tear our pleasures with rough strife  
  
Thus, though we cannot make our sun  
  
Stand still, yet we will make him run.  
  
Arnold finishes his poem and turns hopefully to Lila, who merely applauds politely with the rest of us. Disappointed once again, he returns to his seat.  
  
"Now we will hear from…" Mr. Simmons begins. I slide down in my seat, for once hoping not to be called on. "Helga," he announces. I am saved. I sit up, feeling slightly shaky, and throw Helga a supportive smile. She doesn't seem to notice as she tromps up to the front of the room, scowling at everyone before launching into her recitation.  
  
"I don't know who this is by, and I don't know what it's called either. I just like it," she says, as if daring any of us to challenge her. No one does, and she begins to read.  
  
I am very bothered when I think  
  
of the bad things that I have done in my life.  
  
Not least that time in the chemistry lab  
  
when I held a pair of scissors by the blades  
  
and played the handles  
  
in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner;  
  
then called your name, and handed them over.  
  
O the unrivalled stench of branded skin  
  
as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in,  
  
then couldn't shake off the two burning rings. Marked,  
  
the doctor said, for eternity.  
  
Don't believe me, please, if I say  
  
that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen,  
  
of asking you to marry me.  
  
Helga is a better reader than Arnold. She is louder, naturally, and enunciates more clearly, and unlike Arnold, she is able to refrain from glancing at the object of her affections while reading. Of course that comes from six years of studying the art of deceit, but Helga is a grand master. To scattered applause, loudest from me, she takes her seat.  
  
Suddenly I realize that it is my turn to go. I flush bright red as Mr. Simmons calls my name. Helga whispers something encouraging, and I am touched—she is not the demonstrative type, and such acts of kindness are rare. I stand before the class and find my voice somehow, tiny and weak and scared, but there.  
  
"My poem is called 'In School-Days' and is by John Greenleaf Whittier," I inform the class before beginning to read, my eyes glued to the paper as my words tumble over each other.  
  
Still sits the school-house by the road  
  
A ragged beggar sunning  
  
Around it still the sumachs grow  
  
And blackberry-vines are running  
  
Within, the master's desk is seen  
  
Deep scarred by raps official  
  
The warping floor, the battered seats  
  
The jack-knife's carved initial  
  
The charcoal frescoes on its wall  
  
Its door's worn sill, betraying  
  
The feet that, creeping slow to school  
  
Went storming out to playing!  
  
Long years ago a winter sun  
  
Shone over it at setting  
  
Lit up its western window-panes  
  
And low eaves' icy fretting  
  
I have relaxed to the point where I can look up from time to time. I see my schoolmates listening intently, waiting to see who I might be talking about. I glance at Helga, sitting slumped back against her chair, torn between watching me and staring at Arnold.  
  
It touched the tangled golden curls  
  
And brown eyes full of grieving  
  
Of one who still her steps delay  
  
When all the school were leaving  
  
For near her stood the little boy  
  
Her childish favor singled  
  
His cap pulled low upon a face  
  
Where pride and shame were mingled  
  
Yes, Helga's eyes were blue, not brown, but that is a minor detail. For the important elements—for her heart, and his, it's all there. I glance at Arnold, who is, as usual, completely unaware of the scrutiny he is under from behind, where Helga's eyes are boring a hole in his back, as usual. What would it be like to be that completely innocent? I wonder. Then I have to laugh at myself. I am only nine years old, and already I am lamenting my lost innocence?  
  
Pushing with restless feet the snow  
  
To right and left, he lingered—  
  
As restlessly her tiny hands  
  
The blue-checked apron fingered  
  
A quaver creeps into my voice as I read. I am coming to the difficult part. Because this story has played out among our class, some months before. The story, when Arnold and Helga had been the players, had transpired a little differently, but the situation had been nearly identical. Poems that hit a little too close to home almost always made me cry.  
  
He saw her lift her eyes; he felt  
  
The soft hand's light caressing  
  
And heard the tremble of her voice  
  
As if a fault confessing  
  
"I'm sorry that I spelt the word:  
  
I hate to go above you  
  
Because,"—the brown eyes lower fell.—  
  
"Because, you see, I love you!"  
  
I knew what is coming. The tears begin to stream down my cheeks, and my voice begins to thicken and break with crying. Still, I struggle doggedly through the poem, unwilling to leave it thus unfinished.  
  
Still memory to a gray-haired man  
  
That sweet child-face is showing  
  
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave  
  
Have forty years been growing!  
  
I steal a glance at Helga. She, too, is weeping openly, which surprises me, as Helga is usually better than anyone I knew at hiding her feelings. Perhaps this poem hits a little too close to home for her, too.  
  
He lives to learn, in life's hard school  
  
How few who pass about him  
  
Lament their triumph, and his loss  
  
Like her—because they love him.  
  
As I finish the poem the class sits in stunned silence. Mr. Simmons attempts to break the silence by applauding, by at the first clap I run from the room, tears streaming down my cheeks. I am met in the hallway split seconds later by Helga, who is also in tears. We embrace, feeling sheepish and yet somehow purged.  
  
"Thank you," she manages to get out through her tears as we hug. That is all either of us need to say, though it is some time before either of us is calm enough to return to class.  
  
After school Gerald comes up to me to see if I have recovered, and Helga wanders off, throwing me a wink as she leaves the two of us together. Seconds later Arnold appears, also looking concerned.  
  
"Phoebe, are you all right?" he asks me, but I can see that he is distracted.  
  
"Yes, I'm much better," I assure him. "Thank you for asking."  
  
"That's good," he says with a smile, but his eyes are scanning the crowds of students around us. Most likely he is looking for Lila. Still with the look of concern on his face, he gives us a perfunctory wave good-bye and plunges into the crowd.  
  
I watch him go as I carry on a conversation with Gerald. To my surprise, Arnold heads not for Lila, but for Helga, who is removing her books from her locker. I cannot hear their conversation, but she is smiling, which is a rare and beautiful occurrence…and they are actually hugging…  
  
I return my eyes to Gerald's, laughing at a joke he has just made. It was worth it, then. The nervousness, the tears, the humiliation, because I helped two of my great friends towards seeing something that sometimes I think only I can see. I made a difference in their relationship, at least for this moment.  
  
That's poetry.  
  
  
  
Like it? Hate it? …Love it? Tell me what you thought! 


End file.
